Pellegrino Rossi

Pellegrino Rossi (13 July 1787-15 November 1848) was Interior Minister of the Papal States from 10 September to 15 November 1848, succeeding Edoardo Fabbri and preceding Carlo Emanuele Muzzarelli; he concurrently served as Finance Minister. From 1838 to 1848, he was also a member of France's Chamber of Peers.

Biography
Pellegrino Rossi was born in Carrara, Duchy of Massa and Carrara, Italy on 13 July 1787, and he was educated at the Universities of Pisa and Bologna. He became a law professor in Bologna in 1812, and he supported King Joachim Murat; after Austria invaded Tuscany in 1815, Rossi fled to France. In 1820, he was elected to the cantonal council of Geneva in Switzerland, and he drew up a revised constitution while serving as a member of the diet. After the constitution was rejected, he accepted Francois Guizot's invitation to come to France, and he took over Jean-Baptiste Say's position as chair of political economy in the College de France. In 1839, he was raised to the French peerage, and he became ambassador to the Papal States in 1845. The French Revolution of 1848 severed his ties to France, and he became Pope Pius IX's Interior Minister and Finance Minister. Rossi's program of liberal reforms never took off, and he was also unpopular due to his otherwise conservative views. On 15 November 1848, he was stabbed in the neck on the steps of Parliament by Italian veterans of the conflict of Lombardy, and few mourned him; crowds gathered around his widow's home in Rome to chant "Blessed is the hand that stabbed Rossi." In 1854, Gabriele Constantini was charged with Rossi's murder and executed.